Ozzy Osborne

Down to Earth

Epic

“Elvis is dead, and Ozzy is the King!,” screams one incensed fan in the multimedia movie that is included on the Dark Lord of Metal’s first album in six years, Down to Earth. The 11 songs on this long-awaited opus give credence to the man’s claim, and confirm again that Ozzy Osborne is metal’s consummate symbol and one of its most talented artists.

The album begins with the brooding and thudding riff of “Gets Me Through,” a song dedicated to Ozzy’s legion of committed fans, to whom he says, “I’m not the anti-Christ or the Iron Man / I try to entertain you the best I can / But I still love the feeling I get from you / I hope you’ll never stop cause / It gets me through.”

The album as a whole contains much of what the Ozzman’s fans have come to expect—aggressive guitar work coupled with periods of keyboard melody, all swirled with the master’s voice, one that remains as haunting and powerful as it was when Black Sabbath emerged from the slums of Birmingham, England over 30 years ago. Zakk Wylde, guitar God responsible for much of the music on Osborne’s last three albums, returns to lend his axe to the effort. While his unique funk/chunk distortion and timbre are evident, the lack of gratuitous pitch harmonic riffing, Wylde’s trademark, reveals one fact some may find disturbing—that the songs were written by committee. Mixer Tim Palmer (who has worked with pop-rock stars U2 and death metal mainstays Sepultura among others) and producer Marti Frederickson (the vocalist for the fictional band Stillwater in “Almost Famous,” and a contributor in works from Aerosmith and others) joined Osbornes’s tour guitarist Joe Holmes as co-writers on the bulk of the album’s work.

This collection of writers may have managed, however, to create some new classics. “Facing Hell” stands out, with its steady but alternating riffing, highlighted by more than a few of Wylde’s pitch-harmonic squeals. So does “No Way Out,” which contains the most impressive finger-tapping, string-bending solo on the album. “That I Never Had” is another up-tempo track with a pace reminiscent of earlier hits such as “Desire” and “I Don’t Want to Change the World.” As always, Ozzy illustrates his sensitive side, and while “Dreamer” comes across as somewhat trite and derivative of the Sabbath ballad, “Changes,” the song “Running Out of Time” is a moving power ballad in the mold of “The Road to Nowhere.” On the track, Osborne laments some of his life’s earlier chemical and criminal debauchery (the pill poppin, Alamo-desecrating and dove-slaying), “All the things I put me through / I wouldn’t wish my life on you / Just another lonely broken hero / Picking up the pieces of my mind / Running out of faith and hope and reason / I’m running out of time.”

While Osborne’s distinct stuttering in some recent interviews illustrates the wear and tear of his glory/gory days, the thundering riffs and catchy melodies of “Down to Earth” show that he is still the most marketable and accessible man in metal. As usual, Osborne leaves the rest of the world wondering, “How long can he keep this up?”

—Michael T. Packard